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| Grown-up kids at dinner with mysterious object |
Been driving a lot because...
On Wednesday I reserved a ride
for the trip to Dana-Farber. I got the confirmation call the night before, and
then, the day of, a call from the driver, who asked if I wanted a ride at 2.
I said yes.
So I packed up and looked out
my driveway, and when at 4:06 there was no driver, I called the number he had
used to call me. But I got no answer and no voicemail. I called over and over
until about 4:15 and then finally gave up and called the complaint line at
MART, which arranges the rides.
I got put on hold and then told
that the driver had left, listing me as a no-show.
WHAT?
I said.
"I've been waiting at my
door."
The operator said she would file a
complaint for me but in the meantime I was on my own.
It was a company (Prevalent Transportation, one of the contractors) that has taken
me a zillion times before, and they know to come in the driveway or I can't see
them. This happened once before when a driver waited at the foot of the
driveway, didn't see me, and left without calling. If they don't see me, they
can call! They usually do. The last time this happened, the operator told me
they are not obligated to come into the driveway or to call. I imagine the guy
just didn't feel like doing his job.
I called my people in pheresis
at the Kraft Family Blood Donor Center at Dana-Farber and asked what was the
latest I could get there. They said 4:30. A friend said he would drive me but
by the time he got to my house I would never make it. So around 2:30 or a
little after I jumped into my car and sped off.
I made it exactly at 4:30. They
were impressed. I was wired and upset.
My nurse for the day, Marlene,
tried twice to thread the needle into my left arm. Twice, it hit a valve and
would not go in. I didn't have the help of my oxycodone because I couldn't take
it and drive. It was unpleasant but I did some slow breathing.Tina, another
nurse who was there, gave it a try on the other arm and went in successfully.
They said it would go faster if I tried a double – not exactly the technical
term – meaning one in each arm. This is possible with the new machines. I said
I wouldn't mind but I would wait for a time when I had my pain meds in case I
had a problem.
I started to take a little nap
when the procedure was under way, but a doctor came over to talk, so that was
that. Mandy is a nice pathology fellow. I showed her some of my medical
writing, such as what it's like to live with two sets of DNA, and my most
recent, on how treating neuropathy can be a pain. She said I should go on TV to
tell my story of the four bone marrow transplants. I said I didn't know how to
do that and wasn't sure if I wanted to anyway.
I finished around 7 and got
back home around 9, pretty tired. It wasn't the best timing, because the next
day I had planned to pop down to New York to see some friends and family and do
some of the usual things such as run in the park.
I did it anyway. I parked in
New Haven and took the train to Harlem and then went on to my cousin Jeanne's.
As you do when in New York, I walked all over the place. Yesterday I did around
17,000 steps.
Some of us had a nice shabbat
dinner on Friday. It was extended family, kids and a baby. Time flew. I was
compelled to mention this while looking at my high school friend's children and
a grandchild. I thought we were just in her room making lists of the boys we
liked.
For dessert, I was surprised
with a pre-birthday cake. Sweet! (One Donald Trump sentence structure allowed
per blog post.)
Yesterday I ran a little more
than four miles to and in the park and up to the reservoir. I considered going
all the way around, but I looped back on the bridal path instead. For
someone who really isn't running, I figure that isn't too bad.
There was so much activity that
I thought a race was going on, but one of the runners said it was a training
run for the New York Marathon.
After leaving the park, I got a
bagel and a coffee and sat on the steps of a church on Lexington Avenue about
10 blocks south of 86th and Lex, where my mother's store used to be. Lexington
Avenue feels in many ways the same, but the block where my mother's jewelry store used to be has totally changed. It's one big blob instead of small stores such as my mother's and Reggie the dressmaker's.
I was going to leave after my
run but headed over to UN Plaza to visit my 98-year-old aunt again. When
leaving New York I tend to dilly-dally even more than I do at home. I knew that
I would be tired after picking up my car in New Haven but figured I'd
caffeinate and get through it.
On the way to the 125th
Street/Harlem train station in an Uber, I looked around and realized that I had
left my laptop in Jeanne's apartment. We were already at 106th Street and would
have to go back to 72nd. I asked the driver if he could turn around, but, of
course, it is not so simple in an Uber. I had to send him a text message with
the "new" address (the address from which he had just picked me up )
and an explanatory note and then re-enter the final destination. It's all in
the app, so there was no such thing as using old-fashioned words to tell him, I
later realized. Also, we had a bit of a language barrier. It was cumbersome and
made me wish I was in a cab.
At $32, it was a pretty
expensive trip. I don't know if a cab would have been better or worse.
Having missed my originally
chosen train, I got on the next one with a few minutes to spare and promptly
fell asleep. Once at the train station in New Haven, I went to Notes on my
phone to check my parking space number and saw that I must have not hit SAVE:
The field was blank. Another fine kettle of fish...
I told the people on the
elevator what had happened, and one man said I could get off at the sixth floor
and just walk down. I remembered parking pretty quickly on the
first floor, so I asked the elevator people what they thought about my starting at the bottom. "You could
have lucked out," a nice woman said.
So I rode up with them and then
rode back down, got out, and looked around for A-1 or something like that. I
clicked the door unlock on my keys. A faint beeping grew quickly louder.
Mirabile dictu!
I found the car, got in, and
arrived back home around 9 with no more mishaps.
Today I was tired but
still glad I went.
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